Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals

The axed NBC sitcom "Community" will make its Yahoo debut in March. Yahoo announced Tuesday that the sitcom will begin its online life with a pair of episodes. Then it will air once weekly. Last June, Yahoo, Sony Pictures Television and series creator Dan Harmon reached a deal for a 13-episode sixth season.

The numbers still suggest that cord-cutting is still very limited in practice, but more and more people are beginning to insist it is inevitable that the phenomenon will spread. It doesn’t bode well if MVPDs lose their grip on all premium content.

Starting next week, Time Warner Cable will start informing its Kansas City-based subscribers that the company’s all-digital “TWC Maxx” project will begin its first phase. After upgrading networks in Los Angeles, New York City and Austin last year via TWC Maxx initiatives, Kansas City was one of the cities on the shortlist for this year, along with Charlotte, Dallas, Hawaii, Raleigh, San Antonio and San Diego.

Comcast customers can follow through on those New Year’s fitness resolutions with the addition of Gaiam TV to the cable operator’s subscription VOD service. Comcast’s digital TV subscribers with Xfinity On Demand can access the streaming fitness and yoga video content from Gaiam TV for an additional $6.99 per month.

The migration to generic hardware and network functions virtualization (NFV) is putting a strain on current video equipment prices, according to a recent report. Overall, global broadcast and streaming video equipment revenue decreased 4 percent to $810 million in the first half of 2014 with nearly all product segments down, according to a report by Infonetics Research.

The vast majority of the Emmys for Technical / Engineering Achievement went to companies that in one way or another were involved in broadband video, with an unprecedented emphasis on technologies frequently associated with over the top (OTT) video.

Proximus is preparing to tie its fortunes more closely with the vendor, not only continuing to deliver video services based on Cisco products, but to explore expanding the relationship into smart/connected cities, service orchestration for business customers, SDN, and more.

Yesterday Mexican broadcaster and media company Grupo Television announced it had wrapped up the sale of its 50 percent stake in wireless operator Iusacell back to joint-venture partner Grupo Salinas. The deal paved the way for AT&T to close on its acquisition to buy Iusacell for $2.5 billion, which was announced in November of last year.

AT&T announced it will trial LTE Broadcast at the College Football Championship at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on Monday. The carrier will use the technology to give customers with compatible devices access to additional feeds, alternate camera angles or bonus footage.

Technology forecasters are calling 2015 the year of the Internet of Things — that idea that everyday objects will use sensors and Internet connectivity to start thinking and acting for themselves. Here's a review of the connected and smart home devices that were on display at CES this week.

Days before Thanksgiving, Sony Pictures employees had logged onto computers that flashed a message from a hacker group calling itself Guardians of Peace. Soon personal information for tens of thousands of current and former workers was dumped online, including Social Security numbers and the purported salaries of top executives. More than six weeks later, the studio's network is still down as techs work to get it back online.

Even as Netflix continues to pump out more original programming, its bosses say they will continue to keep secret details on how many people are actually watching. The ratings "arms race" on traditional television has a negative effect on creativity, said Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content executive.

Two companies involved in G.fast said they have conducted the first public demonstrations of the technology that promises to accelerate ordinary DSL networks up to rates fast enough to support the delivery of 4K ultra high definition (UHD) video, and possibly on even to a gigabit per second.

The company showed the LiveSphere application running on an Android set-top box reference design based on the STMicroelectronics Cannes chipset, which supports 4K video. The dynamic selection of the field of view relies on a remote by 4MOD Technology.

Suddenlink Communications has signed up to use Rovi’s DTA guide for its subscribers that are using HD digital terminal adapters (DTAs.) The Rovi DTA Guide provides more digital-like features in viewers’ living rooms while freeing up bandwidth for more HD channels and faster broadband speeds.

Cisco was directly involved in the design and software integration of the Broadcom-based hybrid set-top box. Charter is using ActiveVideo’s Cloud TV platform, which renders the entire user experience server-side, including the EPG video thumbnails, and delivers it as an MPEG stream.

The combination of ProMedia Origin solutions with Microsoft PlayReady, can enable video content and service providers to distribute secure content to a wide range of devices via a single DRM technology. That can significantly reduce the time to market for while minimizing workflow complexity and points of failure.

Broadcom announced this morning at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that it was the first vendor to debut a DOCSIS 3.1-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) for cable operators. Cable operators have been frothing at the mouth for DOCSIS 3.1 gear and today’s announcement from Broadcom included executive quotes from the two largest cable operators in the world, Comcast and Liberty Global.

Ericsson has cut a deal to resell UXP Systems’ Mint Unified Services Platform. Mint is used to create profiles of customers, supporting a common user experience across all screens. The capabilities of the system then extend to personalizing the user experience for each customer.

One of the biggest changes in television this year will be more channels available online with no separate cable or satellite subscription. But for would-be cord-cutters, watching live sports online has been elusive — until now. Dish Network Corp. on Monday unveiled an Internet-only subscription offering that includes ESPN, the cable TV sports network.

At the International CES gadget show this week in Las Vegas, TV makers unveiled new models with 4K resolution, or four times the clarity offered by today's high definition TVs. They are pushing the features even though not a single TV channel is yet available in 4K. But Internet services such as Netflix, Amazon and M-Go are starting to offer 4K video.

Roku said it has produced a reference design it is licensing to TV manufacturers, who can begin development of Roku TV 4K models of their own. TCL is the first to announce it has licensed the design. Meanwhile Netflix will be the company's initial 4K content partner.

With the combination, NeuLion aims to give customers additional options for managing content, giving customers the choice of either building and managing digital video platforms internally or licensing an integrated managed services solution.

Time Warner Cable Sports partnered with IMS Productions on two proof-of-concept 4K tests last month. The first test of ultra-high-definition (UHDTV) broadcasting in 4K was a high school football game on Dec. 19 in California while the second took place during a Dec. 23 broadcast of the Los Angeles Lakers vs. the Golden State Warriors at the Staples Center.